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Nothing but the fact that the church is duly dedicated to S. Francis, and that its outer shell of classic marble encases an old Gothic edifice, remains to remind us that it is a Christian place of worship. It has no sanctity, no spirit of piety. The pride of the tyrant whose legend 'Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan.
Pandulphus Petrucci, Prince of Siena, governd his State, more with them that had been suspected by him, than with the others.
There is, inside Ara Coeli itself commemorating the legend of Augustus and the Sibyl the tomb of Dominus Pandulphus Sabelli, its borrowed vine-garlands and satyrs and Cupids surmounted by mosaic crosses and Gothic inscriptions; and outside the same church, on a ground of green and gold, a Mother of God looking down from among gurgoyles and escutcheons on to the marble river-god of the yard of the Capitol below.
Is it possible that Rome in three days can give me nothing more vivid and heady than the thought of that sarcophagus, let into the wall of the Ara Coeli, its satyrs and cupids and grapes and peacocks surmounted by the mosaic crosses, the mediæval inscriptions of Dominus Pandulphus Sabelli? ROME, February 1888.
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